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The Securities and Exchange Commission's Investor Advisory Committee wants the regulatory agency to rewrite a 2010 proposal to require more disclosures to investors about risks and fees in their target-date funds. "In making this change in disclosure, we are actually going to teach investors something really important that most of them don't understand. There is more to risk than asset allocation," said James Glassman, a member of the committee. The committee gave the SEC five recommendations for expanding the plan.

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Target-date mutual funds, which are popular with retirement savers, are getting even cheaper. Their average asset-weighted expense ratio fell to 78 basis points from 84 basis points in 2013, according to Morningstar. The decline reflects in part mounting competition.

Bond prices are near record highs, but if record-low interest rates jump, the portfolios of target-date-fund investors could take a hit as bond prices fall. "People think this is safe money," said Dave Scott, chief investment officer at Sunrise Advisors. "Losing money in bonds is a brutal way to lose money."

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Investor Advisory Committee wants the regulatory agency to rewrite a 2010 proposal to require more disclosures to investors about risks and fees in their target-date funds. "In making this change in disclosure, we are actually going to teach investors something really important that most of them don't understand. There is more to risk than asset allocation," said James Glassman, a member of the committee. The committee gave the SEC five recommendations for expanding the plan.

Lower-fee target-date funds will be a benefit to retirement savers, experts say, and more investors will be conscious of the overhead costs of their investments with fee-disclosure rules. "A lot of people don't think they pay any fees at all for their 401(k)s," says Eddie Alfred of BrightScope. "It could be a rude awakening when they suddenly see that they are paying 1% or 1.5% of plan assets in fees."

The Securities and Exchange Commission is using about 1,000 investors to determine what kinds of information target-date funds may need to disclose under new rules. The testing is part of the SEC's closer scrutiny of the increasingly popular funds.